HINKLEY >> The life center of a town struggling for decades with an infamous plume of contaminated groundwater will close today, the victim of cost-cutting at the Barstow Unified School District.

The district’s board on Feb. 26 approved separate votes to close Hinkley Elementary/Middle School, the town’s only school — which opened in 1902 — and Thompson Elementary School in Barstow.

The district’s 2012-13 school year ends today for the district. But it also means the end of the Hinkley school and Thompson Elementary.

“I’m pretty disappointed and upset that the school I went to 53 years ago is closing,” said Margaret Brown Peterson, the guardian of her grandson, Andrew Dudney, 12, a seventh-grader at the Hinkley school.

Despite a good academic reputation, Hinkley’s school, and the entire district of about 6,000 students, have experienced a dwindling student population because of the economic downturn — and in Hinkley’s case, partially because of a continuing chromium 6 pollution problem.

Schools in the school district are 50 percent to 60 percent vacant, officials have said.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, San Francisco based utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. used chromium 6 to control rust and algae in cooling towers for its Hinkley natural gas compression station during an era when the cancer-causing characteristics of the chemical weren’t known.

For several years, PG&E has supplied the school with bottled water, prompted by water-quality concerns.

And it was PG&E, once again, that officials focused on in trying to save the school.

Ben Rosenberg, president of the Barstow Unified School District board, said the district reached out to PG&E “in many different forms to see if they would throw us anything.”

After no response for some time, Rosenberg said the district in mid-March received a letter from Ray Gonzalez, PG&E’s senior government relations representative, saying: “The purpose of this letter is to inform you that although we remain committed to the Hinkley community, its families and students, your request to provide the significant financial assistance needed to address the budget considerations and declining enrollment that led to the decision to close Hinkley School is not consistent with our traditional support of educational programs and we must decline. We will, however, continue to work with the Hinkley community and the school district to find other ways to support and create opportunities for Hinkley students.”

“They had absolute zero buy-in,” Rosenberg said. “How is not assisting with keeping the school open consistent with their commitment to the community? If they would have helped to subsidize the school, I would have voted to keep the Hinkley school open.”

The decision to close the Hinkley school came on 4-1 vote, with Barbara Rose the lone dissenter.

Members of Hinkley’s Community Advisory Committee have criticized school officials for not letting the community know in advance that school closure was under consideration.

“We would have put pressure on them,” said Richard Johnson, a committee member.

Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman, has said that the utility’s’s home-buyout program has affected only about 25 students at the Hinkley school.

Since 2010, PG&E has actively offered to buy residents’ homes, since the plume has created an environment where private home sales are virtually impossible.

Courtney Hewitt, 33, persuaded her husband Geoffrey to leave their home in Barstow and build one in Hinkley so that their future children could go to the award-winning school she attended as a child.

She said they built a $350,000 house west of the PG&E compressor station, which is currently outside the plume.

“We are pretty bummed out,” she said.

Not only is their school going away, but their home investment is close to worthless, Hewitt said.

A recent tax assessment from San Bernardino County reduced the valuation of their home from $240,000 to $45,000, she said.

For Peterson’s grandson, Andrew, instead of finishing his final year at the school he has attended since kindergarden — and what was a five-minute walk from home — he’ll be traveling perhaps 30 minutes by bus to Barstow Junior High School.

“I feel sad that I won’t see my friends and my teachers,” said Andrew, who has already been to an orientation at the new school.

“I don’t like it — the halls seem cramped,” he said.

Hinkley students will be bused to several schools in the Barstow district.

“Even kindergarten students will be bused,” Peterson said. “I think that is ridiculous and pathetic.”